This week marks the 44th anniverary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. This historic event, enabled by the worlds finest engineers, took us further than we had ever been, and inspired so many of us to think about what is possible. The science and technology that enabled this pursuit might seem quaint by today's standards, but it was the discipline of engineering that made it work. That discipline is timeless and what we can bring is improved tools to help engineers to do their jobs with greater efficiency and capability.

This week also had another related milestone. Jeff Bezos announced that his team had recovered one of the Apollo 11 engines at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. This 1st stage of the incredibly powerful Saturn V rocket had not been seen since 1969. It took some amazing engineering to locate this wreckage and it was only this past week when it was positively identified as belonging to the Apollo 11 mission.

As you know, this past week, a manned, solar powered airplane flew across the United States. This is something that only a few years ago seemed impossible, but all great milestones appear that way before they are accomplished. The amazing part is that this plane, powered by the sun, flew night and day in a continuous flight without using any other fuel source. When you consider that a lot of laptops can't last on a flight across the US, this is an amazing feat for solar power and battery storage.

“The aircraft, powered by about 11,000 solar cells, soars to 30,000 feet while poking along at a top speed of 45 mph. Most of the 11,000 solar cells are on the super-long wings that seem to stretch as far as a jumbo jet’s. It weighs about the size of a small car and soars with what is essentially the power of a small motorized scooter.
The Solar Impulse left San Francisco in early May and has made stopovers in Phoenix, Dallas-Fort Worth, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Dulles.”

Of course, this is only one more step in the constant evolution of both clean, renewable energy and aircraft design. The promise for efficient transportation rests squarely on the backs of engineers who will keep raising the bar!

This improvement on the classic paper airplane shows how far UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) can go. These prototypes were built at Queensland University of Technology. The first is a steerable plane using onboard electronics, sensors and controllable flaps to guide an airplane to a predetermined target. The second device follows nature's design and allows an electronics package to be dropped from a great height and perform work as it gently falls to the ground. This is simpler than parachute designs and is very inexpensive to manufacture. The potential of UAV's continue to grow and cheaper, more scalable technologies like this will only increase their adoption.